long.  When I was a boy size of that yonder biggest boy my folks was still thinking the government was going to give em something.  I was ten years old when they left Mrs. Kidd’s.  They thought the government was going to give em 40 acres and a mule or some kind of a start.  I don’t know where they got the notion.  My father voted down in Mississippi.  I vote.  I was working in the car shops in St. Louis in 1923.  Me and my wife both voted then.  I worked there two years.  I come back to Arkansas where I could farm.  The land was better here than in Mississippi.  I walked part of the way and rode part of the way when I come here from Mississippi.  I vote a Republican ticket.  Bout all I owns is two little pigs and a few chickens.  I did have a spring garden.  We work in the field and make a little to eat and wear.

“I find the present times is hard for old folks.  Some young folks is doing well I guess.  They look like it.  I made application twice for help but I ain’t never got on.  I don’t know what to think bout the young folks.  If they can get a living they have a good time.  They don’t worry bout the future.  A little money don’t buy nothin’ much now.  It seem like everything is to buy.  Money is hard to get.”

Interviewer:  Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed:  Isabella Duke
                    Little Rock, Arkansas (towards Benton)
                    Visiting in Hazen
Age:  62

[HW:  Father Wore a Bonnet]

“My own dear mother was born at Faithville, Alabama.  She belong to Sam Norse.  His wife was Mistress Mai Jane.  They moved to Little Rock years after my mother had come there.  After seberal months they got trace of one another.  I seed two of the Norse girls and a boy.  Master Norse was a farmer in Alabama.  Mother said he had plenty hands in slavery.  She was a field hand.  She had a tough time during slavery.

“Pa said he had a good time.  ’Bout all he ever done was put on old mistress’ shoes and pull her chair about for her to sit in.  He built and chunked up the fires.  Old mistress raised him and he had to wear a bonnet.  He was real light.  He said the worse whoopings he ever got was when he would be out riding stick horses with his bonnet on.  The hands on the place would catch him and whoop him and say, ‘Old mis’ thinks he’s white sure as de worl’.’  The hands on the place sent him to the big house squalling many a time.

“After he got grown he could be took for a white man easy.  He was part French.  He talked Frenchy and acted Frenchy.  Every one who knowd him in Little Rock called him Pa Frazier and called my mother Ma Frazier, but she was dark.  Pa said he et out his mistress’ plate more times than he didn’t.  She raised him about like her own boy.